Kenya Series! Why Did I Choose To do a Medical Mission Trip?

Welcome Back!

I flew back into this side of the world less than 12 hours ago (at the time of writing this), and of course I can’t sleep to save my life… So I’m up writing this instead!

Doing a medical mission trip is a great way to get more experience outside of your traditional learning environment. As a current medical student, this is a great way to actually see patients and improve your clinical skills while still being supervised. The more medical experience you have, the less you will need to be supervised. If you are an undergraduate student, this is a great way to get experience via shadowing, observing, or helping with other tasks in the area.

As part of KCU, we worked with an established clinic outside of Kisumu, Kenya. We did not do a pop up clinic. The clinic we assisted/worked at is currently a non-profit organization in an area where getting medical help is more difficult. Prior to the clinic being built, the community was unable to either travel or afford to get medical help. Others didn’t want to know their HIV status or were worried about stigma. Since the clinic has been operating, more people have access to some healthcare, and the clinic assists with much more as well. Including: counseling services, rides to bigger hospitals, dedicated eye/dental days, assistance with scheduling surgeries or other consultations with outside hospitals, sponsorship programs for orphans and children to go to school, and assistance with parents for improving education. Not to mention the entire center is a safe space for kids to play at.

The clinic does charge to see patients, but it is usually very little. The fees are more of a “don’t take advantage of the system” then an actual fee. And if those seeking help cannot pay the small fee to get your name on the list, the fees are usually waived. If the patient needs additional medications/treatments/care, there may be more of a fee? I believe it was mostly to cover the cost of supplies, but in general most of the care was free. This tidbit wasn’t completely shared with us, but this was the most information I could muster from a few people.

Dr. Bonyo, Dr. Desai, Dr. Abraham, Marylyn, and the students on our first clinic day.

We worked with Bonyo’s Kenya Mission. Feel free to click the link to learn more about this particular clinic. KCU brings students here twice a year. Once for 2.5-3 weeks (which is the one I did) and another that is a longer rotation for 3rd and 4th year students. We worked along side local staff and physicians. There is always an attending on call. All of the lab staff, pharmacy staff, counseling services, and nurses were present at the clinic when we were there as well. Without the staff, we couldn’t have assisted and seen the patients that we did.

While we were there, it was advertised in churches as free health care which caused a massive influx of patients. This is not normally the flow that they see. When we come, we provide manpower; and the community advertises for them to see us so they can get anything taken care of while we are there.

It really is a win-win. The community gets care that they need or otherwise wouldn’t have attempted to get, and we get to improve our skills and be reminded of why we wanted to be physicians in the first place.

While reflecting back on the amazing time I had, I want to discuss my personal reasons as to why I chose to partake in this experience. So let’s talk about medical mission trips today!

Goals before my trip:

While deciding if I wanted to do this trip, I made a list of all of the things I wanted to accomplish while there. I wanted to assess what I felt I needed to improve on as a student and hoped that these could be aligned in some way with doing this trip.

  • The biggest reason I wanted to go was to improve my skills. I wanted to improve my ability to take a history. My ability to do a physical exam, and do so confidently. My ability to present to an attending like I would in my rotations and eventually as a resident. I wanted to improve my basic medical skills such as taking pulse, blood pressure, etc. Even though I had experience through SP’s my first year, I wanted the experience of not knowing the category of the chief complaint. I wanted to test and improve on how I could take care of patient that I had no idea why they were coming in and weren’t reading off a script.
  • I wanted to improve my compassion and my ability to see patients. And I wanted to do it without knowing that if I failed I could just repeat seeing a patient. This goes back to the SP thing, but it really is a completely different experience seeing real patients instead of the conjured ones you see in medical school for practice/assessment.
  • Confidence. I wanted to be able to take all of the above and try to improve my confidence in being a future doctor. Medical school is really good about beating you down or making you second guess your abilities. This trip was to help me realize that I can do this, and that I can get good at it in my future.
  • An experience of a lifetime. I had never travelled to the other side of the world before. I was scared shitless for this. Most people do not (usually) travel to developing countries for vacation. People think of going to Cancun, or Italy, or the Caribbean for vacation. I wanted to experience another country and all of its culture & the people.
  • On this note, I also wanted to be humbled. I wanted to be reminded that even though I have my problems, I wanted perspective that most of my problems in my cushy, developed country of good ol’ US of A were not nearly as difficult as those in a developing country.  The work and labor that I saw people do on a daily basis was astounding. Yet at the same time, it is their way of life and they know no different. I needed to be reminded of that perspective. And what a more perfect time than to do it after completing one whole year of medical school.
Why I chose to go with KCU?

Honestly, I’m a scared little bitch and was too afraid to go to the other side of the world by myself to a country that I had never been to.

Really, that was a huge portion of it. I knew KCU would guarantee as much safety as they could in another country. I researched several other companies outside of KCU to originally go with, and it came down to KCU and one other country. I mainly chose KCU’s trip for safety reasons.

The other main reason is I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to unintentionally harm a potential patient. With KCU, I knew we would have a professor present with us to sign out and help us learn and treat patients. The added assurance that there was a licensed physician present who could help me learn and grow while still  making sure I didn’t kill or hurt my patient was a pretty great bonus. I could not handle the responsibility of seeing a patient on my own without someone else there after 1 year of medical school.

If you think you can do this without guidance, Imma slap you. You literally know next to nothing in patient care after one year of school. Knowing that there were attendings present helped foster growth. A theme I wanted to stick with on this trip. I was less afraid to learn and try something knew because I knew at the end of the day I would have guidance available.

I also knew that this was an established clinic that KCU had worked with for years. Knowing that I was going to assist in a clinic that existed and would continue to exist after I was going was something important to me.

What I learned:

So much. So, so much.

I’m not even sure I can really put this into words. But Imma try lol.

For one, I gained some confidence. My first two days in clinic I was super nervous; I felt like I had forgotten everything we had learned in our PCM course (or “How to be a Doctor” course) despite having gone over basic skills the night before our first clinic shift. I was scared and unsure how to handle having translators. I was scared to have to practice. We could only order limited labs and imaging was out of the question; so trying to manage that and understand it was new.

I was all of a sudden expected to act in the capacity of a resident per se without much prior experience.

And my professors could tell that I was nervous and not super confident when first starting. They gave me a lot of crap about that. But after day 1.5 I would say, I finally got into the swing of things. And I was KICKING ASS.

Confidence really does carry a long ways though. Your patients feel better when you are confident knowing that you can take care of them. My classmates all told me that I seemed to have it together and that I was kicking butt… even though I was seeing just as many patients as them. (Thanks loves!) And the clinic staff were more likely to help me if I was more confident in what I wanted.

The other obvious thing I gained this summer was improvement in my skills. I didn’t get to see as many patients in Kenya for varying reasons, but without doubt improved my skills in every aspect: osteopathic manipulation, physical exam,  presenting, and overall just owning what was given to me. I came back ready to rock and roll this year and was WAYYY less nervous to perform than I was first year.

But lastly, I gained a whole lot of perspective. My friends and family asked if I became depressed because of what I came into contact with in Kenya. Being an emotional being, I was also expecting that.

However, majority of the people I met and took care of were just happy and content with life. The kids were just happy to be playing. The elders were just happy to sit in the shade and talk and hang out. The women in the fields that we passed by every day to get to clinic were ecstatic just to get their picture taken.

Obviously, as majority of my classmates and I are Mzungu’s (foreigners; white), and we were met with sad stories in an attempt for us to give money. But overall, the people were sweet, friendly, and happy. While away from the US and my stressful life as a medical student, I was reminded of just how truly blessed I was to be where I am. To be in a country where my considered “necessities” are mostly luxuries in developing countries. That I too can appreciate the small and wonderful things in life, and be content on much less.

Like I said before, I am overflowing with what I have experienced in Kenya that it is hard to put it into words.

For undergrads:

I’m well aware that there are several students, particularly undergraduate students, who do “medical mission trips”. I put this in quotes because you likely haven’t learned any basic medical skills yet or have much in the way of medical knowledge. When this is the case, these trips are designed more for exposure with the added bonus of travel for you. You legally cannot do anything medical, and during these trips the company you are with likely won’t teach you how to do anything either. (There may be a few exceptions, but for the most part if you don’t know how to do something they aren’t going to take the time to teach you).

Because you cannot do much in the way of actual medicine, you will usually be involved in more global health tasks. Such as:

  • Teaching English
  • Doing epidemiology in the region you are in
  • Teaching on improved health practices
  • Assisting other medical team members who are seeing patients
  • Shadowing local physicians/observational roles
  • etc.

Why won’t they allow you to practice if you have no experience? 

Well. I’m so glad you asked. This topic is pretty irksome for me.

In the United States and most developed countries, you cannot practice medicine or do basic medical skills on another human being without training. Of any sort. Whether that is a completion certificate for EMT or nursing aide, OR a degree.

Which is my point exactly. 

You likely wouldn’t want to be worked on by a 20 year old without any medical knowledge. It isn’t fair, nor is it ethically right to try to take advantage of those in a developing country. So please don’t expect to be able to do something that you are not qualified to do in another country, just because they don’t have as strict of safety laws or ethics preventing it.

If you want to be a doctor, nurse, or PA and you think you can take advantage of another human in a different country, please bow out of medicine now. You will never ethically be able to justify doing this. 

But overall, doing a medical mission trip is a really great way to get your feet wet. Both before medical school and while currently attending.

I don’t suggest that this be your only exposure before medical school to medicine though. Try to be more well-rounded than that in your application. Having more than one experience (which many can be in your community) and increased exposure to draw on will always help you.

I hope you gained some insight on medical missions trips in the post. Feel free to leave a comment, share, or send me an email with any questions!

What I did this Summer!

Hello MedHatters!

Courtesy of giphy.com

How is everyone? This will be posted incredibly late. But you know what? I don’t care. I will probably need a reminder to be grateful by the time this comes out. Or conversely, I’ll be sad that I’m not still doing these things. So, don’t judge me.

Anywho, we are the first class (or at least the first in a very long time) that we got 8 weeks of summer. The classes before us only had 4. Which really, doesn’t seem fair to them. And yes, a lot of the now third years (a class above me) were not very happy to know we got an extended summer. But I gotta say, having an extra month was G-L-O-R-I-O-U-S.

The goal for this, apparently, was so we would have additional time to do research. It is very hard to convince someone to take you on in their lab when you only have 4 weeks available to participate. I mean, it’s pretty hard to get much accomplished in 4 weeks in a lab. Unless you join an intensive research opportunity (which usually involves an application). And you really won’t have a ton of time to continue doing research once school starts again.

There are some students who will start working in the labs of professors on the KC campus over the summer (or from COB) and try to continue working during medical school. More power to you. I don’t care enough to do that.

BUT!

Most of us are definitely not using that time to do research. Some of us are trying to buff up our CV during the summer with other opportunities, but a lot of us really just want to relax.

And currently while on summer break, it is fantastic to have this much time off! We did have to suffer a bit during the year because we still learned the same amount of material, just in less time on some courses. Despite what they told us (which is that they took stuff out), I’m pretty sure they didn’t. I’m hoping they’ve taken our feedback about this and truly did look at the curriculum and changed it more accordingly to the new time limit. I guess ya’ll next year will find out if they did or didn’t.

Okay, back to what I was saying. Because we have a bit more time, this means I was able to fill up my summer with additional fun things outside of just chilling and doing nothing at home.

Which was great. I did have a few moments that after chilling in my apartment doing mostly sleeping and cleaning with my cat. There were times where it got a bit lonely. But, I definitely had plenty to do this summer!

First week off:

I’m not going to lie, it took a few days, actually almost an entire week, for me to accept that I didn’t have to study. I was constantly freaking out thinking I should be studying something. It took a week + to actually come down off of my almost 10 month streak of constant stress as well. I literally had panic attacks because I wasn’t studying. 

On the flip side, it was pleasant to be able to hangout with my significant other for an entire week without interruptions. No stress from school, looming exams, having obligations in our schedule, none of it. It was simply amazing to basically date him all over again and spend time with him uninterrupted for a week.

Why a week? Well, that was all I could get E to agree on staying past our final exam before he went home for the summer. Maybe I can bargain for longer next summer lol.

Our goal was to try to be active at least every other day that first week. The reason being is one, we like hiking. We haven’t really been able to hike or explore much since school started. Two, for the most part it is cheap to do! Minus the gas money to get somewhere, it was a relatively cheap activity that we spent a couple of hours doing. It was great to be outdoors for both the mind and body, doing some exercise. And three, well we are really out of shape from basically sitting on our butts all year studying. So we wanted to ease into it!

I have so many photos. It’s going to be hard to choose some of my favorites to add here.

Places we went:

  • Lake Bella Vista/Bentonville, AR. They had a massive track around a lake which was flat, but they also had some bike trails in a more wooded area/hilly area. We definitely decided to go on the bike trails because they were more interesting. Totally got my ass kicked as I hadn’t done anything in a while. The flat track was a nice ending to the hike though!

    Us on part of the bike trail path.
    Also found a random 10 commandments chained to a tree at the end of our walk?
  • Springfield, MO. We visited the Nathanael Greene Park which had a small botanical garden area. There were also many other parks within that park. We were rushed out by the rain after
    Some finds during a brief walk through the botanical gardens.

    only being there 20 or so minutes. But! We did get to see some cute bunnies nomming on plants and a ton of beautiful flowers!

  • We also visited the Wonders of Wildlife National Museum & Aquarium while in town. We wanted to continue to explore/walk but wanted to get out of the downpour that occurred while at the botanical gardens. Great aquarium actually! There was much more there than I expected. Some lull areas, but overall really fascinating with a lot of different exhibits. E even had a standoff with a giant octopus (it didn’t like that another large red thing was in it’s space!).

    A beautiful jelly in the aquarium
  • We did explore a bit in downtown Springfield after all of this, but we decided to grab a bite to eat and head home just because we were exhausted from all the walking.  We will have to come back next year and explore more!
  • The last hiking spot we fit in was actually here in town in Joplin. We initially went to check out Grand Falls (a smaller waterfall) but there wasn’t much hiking over there. Looks like a great place to hang out though while hot.

    Octopus standoff!
  • Instead we went to Shoal Creek (formerly Wildcat Glades Conservation). There is a large hiking trail that tracks along the river. The same river you can float down from Grand Falls. It was, incredibly long… I was not expecting the hike to be that long. My feet definitely hurt. As an FYI, there are only 2 spots to cross the river. If you don’t feel like doing the entire trail/oval, make sure you don’t cross the river. Otherwise, you will have to walk the entire length OR grab an uber to get back to the center. There were also two spots out on the trail as they are redoing a bridge. We started in the afternoon but finished in the early evening (after construction crews usually go home) so we just walked along the torn up trail anyways. I don’t recommend doing this while they are doing construction though.
View from our walk on the Shoal Creek Trail. We even got to a see a beautiful eagle!
Hanging with my BFF’s:

I really didn’t get to spend as much time up in KC my first year as I had hoped. I tried to make an effort during part of first semester of first year. I really did. But stress and life happened. The goal was to hang out with my besties as much as I could since they were all staying here and I moved to Joplin.

But because life never goes as planned, I tried to spend as much time up here in KC with one of my besties over the summer. Practically every weekend I would drive up on Friday afternoon/Saturday morning and stay until Sunday night/Monday morning. There were a couple of times where I came mid-week, usually because I had to come to KC for something else. But it was fantastic to get to hang out with her as much as I did.

One of my amazing BFF’s. Also, can we just appreciate how tan I look in this photo? In a race between a ghost, a sheet of paper, and myself, I usually win in how pale I am…

Most of my medical school friends were not in town as they all went home, travelled abroad, etc. I definitely enjoyed being able to just chill by the pool with friends this past summer and chat it out. Or drink. Or both. In general, it was nice to catch up with some of my friends either on campus (again, I have really shitty internet) or bumping into them outside in the community too!

Prepping for kenya:

Honestly, this took up most of my time. There was a fair amount of prepping and shopping that needed to happen before this trip. This trip was expensive to begin with (to cover costs of flight, lodging, food, and travel while we are there), but there was a fair amount that needed to be done and paid for outside of that. Mostly including immunizations and obtaining things on my packing list that I did not have, thought would be good to bring, or in order to take care of my cat while I’m gone.

It was all very expensive. Lots of shopping. Lots of traveling. Lots of packing!

I will be starting a Kenya series that goes over all of this after I come back from my trip. Stay tuned!

How I filled the rest of my time:

Well, one this blog. lol. I finally got the writing bug! There was a time last year where I was writing because I wanted to document and put things out. However, in doing so it almost burnt me out more. I took a brief break from it and thought that as soon as summer hit I’d be motivated again.

Wrong.

I wasn’t motivated until about a week before I left for Kenya. And in all honesty, that might have been just because I was super excited to go to Kenya. But thankfully I had a lot of great ideas that I had stashed away last year and never wrote about. So I’m going to try to write as much as I can before school starts, so I can just focus on school when it gets here.

I played so.much.sims. OMG. I haven’t played this game in forever and I forgot how much I enjoyed it? My computer that was gifted to me in a previous relationship does not have a CD rom drive unfortunately. But E was kind enough to leave his laptop home so I could use his to play! I had a lot of fun just doing this for hours. I know, sad. But I needed a way to veg out seeing as I don’t play video games.

For most of the summer I didn’t read. I wanted nothing to do with a book. My brain didn’t want to think, and for some reason it thought that if I read fiction I was all of a sudden going to have to use my brain…

I know. Doesn’t make sense. I’m realizing that now.

I did bring two books to Kenya with me though. They are the last two in a murder mystery series that I started last summer and just couldn’t get around too. I was pretty positive I wasn’t going to ever actually pick them up. I brought them as a just in case, but low and behold when you are stuck in a car for 6+ hours for a few days, music gets a bit old. So I picked one back up and we will see if I can finish it before school starts!

I did however do some light reviewing. But honestly, I mean super light. If you can call it that. I wanted to relook at some basic skills before going to Kenya. We had a bit of a refresher course while there, but I wasn’t positive that would happen before leaving stateside. I did not however, review anything in first aid OR pre-read for class. This lady wanted all the time not related to school as she could get.

Another thing that took up a large chunk of time was cleaning. Oh Lord Jesus I did so much cleaning. You don’t realize how dirty your apartment is when you are constantly focused on studying. And you also don’t realize how much your cat sheds in the summer until you are actually home and it is on literally everything.

I mean everything. How does she even expend that much energy to shed that much?

Aside from being slightly annoyed by the cat hair, I actually enjoy cleaning. I’m a stress cleaner and I grew up with a mother who was pretty strict about keeping the house clean. So it is nice to have a thoroughly cleaned apartment. That way I can start on a clean slate.

The surprising thing this summer that I was involved with included the mass amount of dealings with my school club. I honestly didn’t think I would have to be this involved this summer. It’s not a bad thing, I will enjoy the fruits of my labor next year. But really, there were quite a few things that boiled over from the year prior. I guess that’s what happen when you run the largest club on Joplin’s campus?

The last thing that I really enjoyed filling my time with this past summer is not characteristic of me at all. I made banana bread. I made it from scratch for the first time ever. I won’t call myself a baker, mostly because I really can’t do much without a recipe in my hand that someone else gruelingly made so I can easily follow it. But I was pretty happy at how well it turned out.

It was very delicious by the way. And very filling.

Much dense. Very banana.

What to do the summer before 1st year:

If you are reading this before starting medical school, I do have some advice on what to do or what not to do. You will likely hear all of this from several current students or former students. But the common theme is this: Enjoy yourself. The summer before is when you will be the most excited about what is ahead in your journey.

  • DON’T prep. You will have no idea what you will need to know. Even talking to prior years, they change the curriculum so often at KCU that even though we just went through it, it likely isn’t the same anymore. So, enjoy your last summer before the craziness begins.
  • DO do whatever it is you want. Cross off things on your bucket list. Hangout by the pool all summer. Go on adventures. Travel. Read leisurely. Do all those crazy crafty things you’ve always wanted to try. Whatever it is you’ve wanted to try or haven’t had time to do, now is the time to do it. You likely won’t have time to do it in school.
  • Eat all the delicious food you want. Because why not? You will definitely stress eat. A lot of us gained weight our first year. We sit most of the day, stressed out and studying. We eat I would say a fair amount because we use our brains so much, but a fair amount of us just don’t have time to go to the gym or are so stressed out that we can’t balance the weight we gain with our current lifestyles. And honestly, when you are stressed you don’t crave great food. It’s usually crappy stuff you want that is comforting while eating it but not good for you later. That’s okay. Enjoy the guilt free eating or all the delicious food now. LOL.

Thanks for sticking around! If you like what you read feel free to leave a comment, send me an email with questions, or share on social media.